Representative democracy in Pennsylvania is under attack. This week, on a straight party-line vote, Republican senators passed a constitutional amendment that would give the majority party in the General Assembly a strikingly unprecedented degree of influence over who is elected to our courts, including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In turn, that would undermine the checks and balances in our state government — including those that have blocked, and would block in the future, the Republicans from tilting the rules of our democracy in their favor.

There seems to be an overall optimism among state legislators that the Pennsylvania budget will pass on time given the positive revenue numbers in the state, a straight-forward budget proposal by the governor, and no haunting budget deficit to overcome like in years past. That said, the details of what said budget will look like have not been shared.

Republicans today added a second constitutional amendment to, in effect, gerrymander the Supreme Court to a bill, SB22, that proposed a constitutional amendment to stop gerrymandering of the congressional and state legislative elections. The Supreme Court gerrymandering amendment passed on a party line vote. And it means that today all supporters of redistricting reform, including PBPC, withdrew support for SB22 and tomorrow all Democrats will likely vote against it.

Last Friday, June 8, the Senate Agricultural Committee came out with its plan for the Senate Farm Bill. Keeping with the Farm Bill’s long tradition of bipartisan support, this version was released by the Senate Agricultural chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas and the ranking member Debbie Stabenow who is a Democratic senator from Michigan. Unlike the House version of the bill which included harmful work requirements connected to SNAP, the Senate Farm bill would reauthorize SNAP and make steps toward improving it.

Some advocacy groups are supporting an omnibus amendment from Senator Folmer and others. It makes some small improvements to SB22 and deals with the finality issue I mention below. (point 4). But it does not deal with SB22's fundamental structural issues which will enable the majority party to continue to gerrymander congressional and state legislative districts. Thus, we continue to urge that SB22 be restored to its original form. And if not, it should be defeated. As we have pointed out elsewhere, defeating SB22 in its current form does not mean the end of redistricting reform. The House can pass HB2402, which is the same as the original version of SB22, and send it to the Senate. The best elements of SB22 can be enacted as legislation and applied to the current redistricting process. And we all can, and should, be working for a good constitutional amendment next year which can be used to redraw district lines as soon as the voters approve it.

Both the political class in Harrisburg and the progressive community around the state are focused today on the redistricting issue. Last week the Senate State Government Committee passed a version of SB22 that was crafted by Senator Mike Folmer. Some of the advocacy groups that have been working in favor of a fair redistricting process have been cautiously, or in some cases not so cautiously, supportive of it. Some who have argued that the proposal itself is problematic have held that passing it in the Senate is a necessary step to reaching a better bill.

I’m reluctant to create divisions among people who are generally allies, but I want to make clear that I believe the Folmer redistricting proposal is not only deeply flawed but is in no way a step forward for those of us who want to see a fair, nonpartisan process of drawing congressional and state legislative district lines.

Governor Tom Wolf signed an executive order yesterday aimed at combating pay equity in Pennsylvania. The order, called “Equal Pay for Employees of the Commonwealth,” prohibits employers in state government from asking applicants for their salary history in an effort to steer employers away from reinforcing pay inequities between men and women.

We at the PBPC have been very critical of the effort to pass SB22, a constitutional amendment to change the way legislative districts for both Congressional and state legislative races are drawn, as it was recently amended in the state government committee. But that’s not because we don’t favor an independent redistricting commission that would create fair, nonpartisan districts.

We are very much in favor of a nonpartisan independent redistricting commission. There are very good, strategic options for securing a constitutional amendment, or the best parts of the current SB22, through legislation this year or very soon without supporting SB22 as it stands now. But we object to a political strategy that runs the very real risk of giving us another decade or more of gerrymandered districts, especially one that allows the Republican majority to claim credit for creating a better redistricting process when they have, in fact, undermined it.

Last week, the House of Representatives voted against the troubling Farm Bill that had recently passed through the Agricultural Committee. This version of the bill would have resulted in many Pennsylvanians losing access to SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps, which is often the last defense against hunger in our communities. The proposed House Farm Bill would cut SNAP benefits by nearly $19 million and take away food assistance from two million Americans who already struggle to make ends meet. It would particularly hurt families, children and the disabled by implementing strict and ineffective work programs, as well as unforgiving reporting rules, that would lead to people losing this critical benefit.

Over the last couple months, we at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center have been holding community conversations to hear from individuals across the state about the challenges they are facing and to understand what they would like to see done differently in Harrisburg. One young man we spoke to in recent weeks, Colten, told us his story. Colten has been homeless off and on over the last three years since his grandma committed suicide. He has been in and out of low wage retail jobs and struggles to secure affordable housing.